Linking qualitative and quantitative methods in cross-cultural survey research: Techniques from cognitive science

Survey research with diverse cultural and ethnic minority groups is a complex and challenging endeavor that confronts the researcher with problems related to linguistic and conceptual equivalence and measurement as well as problems related to difficulties that respondents have with the sociocultural dimensions of the survey/interview process. One way to improve the quality of cross-cultural surveys and to insure that the findings are culturally relevant and accurate is to combine qualitative and quantitative methods. This paper proposes that certain qualitative techniques from cognitive science, specifically cognitive anthropology and cognitive psychology, are particularly well suited to being combined with survey research. These techniques provide information corresponding to the underlying thought processes of respondents and enable researchers to better understand how different cultural and ethnic groups construe the world. The information obtained can be used improve the formulation of survey questions, design and structure questionnaire formats to coincide with the way particular groups organize concepts, and help researchers understand difficulties respondents may have with the survey/interview process. In addition, the techniques produce data that are easily codifiable and more manageable than traditional qualitative techniques including participant observation and in-depth interviews.     

The myth of science education

It is argued that the manner in which we teach science in the high schools represents an outdated positivistic conception of science. The standard presentation of a year of each of chemistry, biology and physics should be replaced by an integrated science plus history, philosophy, and sociology of science which would take a total of three years to complete. A proper appreciation for the true nature of science is essential to the continued health of the scientific enterprise.     

Shrinkage estimation of linear combinations of true scores

This paper is concerned with combining observed scores from sections of tests. It is demonstrated that in the presence of population information a linear combination of true scores can be estimated more efficiently than by the same linear combination of the observed scores. Three criteria for optimality are discussed, but they yield the same solution which can be described and motivated as a multivariate shrinkage estimator.Input from Eric Bradlow, Charles Lewis, and Linda Zeger is acknowledged. Research for this paper was funded by the Program Research Council (ETS). Suggestions of the Editor and of anonymous referees were instrumental in several improvements of the paper.     

Powerful Pedagogy in the Science-and-Religion Classroom

This essay is a discussion of effective teaching in the science-and-religion classroom. I begin by introducing Alfred North Whitehead's three stages of learning—romance, discipline, and generalization—and consider their implications for powerful pedagogy in science and religion. Following Whitehead's three principles, I develop a number of additional heuristics that deal with active, visual, narrative, cooperative, and dialogical learning styles. Finally, I present twelve guidelines for how to use e-mail and class-based listserves to achieve some of these outcomes.     

The Question of God in an Age of Science: Constructions of Reality and Ultimate Reality in Theology and Science

Both science and theology have lately faced a crisis of authority. Their shared realization of the extent to which knowledge is underdetermined by the data and socially constructed provides a kind of common ground for reconsideration of their respective methods of inquiry as well as of the status of the claims they have warrant to make. Both fields are now consciously and critically employing a models approach. This article proposes criteria for assessing models and applies the criteria to one model from each field. The model of understanding evolution as a struggle for existence is considered from the field of science, and the traditional model for understanding the God-world relation as that of a king's relation to his kingdom is considered from the field of theology. Each of these models is evaluated with respect to its credibility, religious viability, and moral adequacy. In each case an alternative analogy is proposed and argued for.     

Postmodernism: What One Needs to Know

This essay is an introduction to postmodernism and deconstruction as they relate to the special challenges of scholarship and teaching in the science and religion multidiscipline.     

Polanyi's Finalism

Although Michael Polanyi's model of science and his construal of the nature of the real are usually thought to be congenial to religion and although Polanyi himself says that "the stage on which we thus resume our full intellectual powers is borrowed from the Christian scheme of Fall and Redemption" (Polanyi 1958, 324), theologians have given little attention to the model of God he presents. The metaphysical and theological vision unfolded in part 4 of Personal Knowledge is a thoughtful alternative to materialist versions of neo-Darwinism and provides a platform for revisiting four long-standing controversies at the interface of science and religion: whether life and mind can be completely specified in terms of physical analysis, whether nature can be adequately understood without appeal to final causes, whether natural selection adequately explains life's diverse forms, and whether knowledge can be fully objectified. Through an exploration of Polanyi's contribution to these discussions, we undertake to show not only that his treatment of God as a cosmic field is strikingly original but also that in reinstating activity as a metaphysical category, he reconstructs our understanding of our creaturely hope and calling.     

Family Secrets: The Case of the Patient Kept in the Dark

The author examines the position of a child from whom important matters in his or her own life or key events in the family have been kept secret, outlines criteria by which the decision whether or not to unveil the secret should be made, and urges colleagues to gather more data and examine further family secrets.